News

Landline phone lines are currently getting targeted by scammers with all kinds of requests including investment opportunities, tax fraud and technical support calls. The most worrying is people calling and asking for donations to the bushfire victims suffering from the fires burrently ravaging Australia.

Some people are getting as manu as 4 calls per hr and have resorted to screening calls and not picking up the phone until a message has been left.

The important message here is that no legal organisations are calling for Donations for bushfire victims so do not give any money especially over the phone to anyone requesting money in this way.

Now is a good time to screen your calls until the number slows down. If you have caller ID you can the fake calls as the number is often withheld or comes from interstate or even overseas.

Be aware and don't get scammed.

If you want to receive alerts like this in your inbox please consider joining Frontier Internet Zone where you will get your Tech Support Alert every week and whenever a serious threat is online that could impact you.  

It is that time of the year when you have done some shopping online and you are waiting patiently for that delivery so you can wrap it up and put under the tree of give as a gift over the Christmas holiday season.

When you get a message in your email box or even by text message with the heading saying "Your parcel could not be delivered" you are more likely to open the message and click on the link that proports to tell you why your parcel is delayed. When you click on the link you are in real danger of infecting your computer with dangerous malware or losing your personal data and possible savings from your bank accounts.

The messages are more realistic then ever before and it is very hard to tell the difference from your postal company and the fake scammer unless you are alert and smart about how you respond to these emails.

Here are the following tips to help you dodge the scammers.

1.  Use a Gmail account to filter your emails. You can have up to five email accounts checked by your Gmail account so you can run your ISP based emails and business accounts through the account. Although the Gmail experience is not everyones cup of tea, the protection it gives you from scams and spam emails is more than worth the learning curve of the Gmail way. There are many other benefits of having a Gmail account which you can find out about in our FIZ forums.
2. Hover over any links in parcel delivery emails and see where the links is pointing. If it does not match the name of the company you are dealing with it is very likely dangerous and should not be clicked on.
3. Use parcel tracking from the store you shopped at. You can always log into the shop you are buying from and track your delivery and use the same area of your account to make enquiries and get support if your product is not up the scratch.
4. Always make an account if you can so that you start a relationship with the shop you are buying from so that you can easily log in and follow the progress of the delivery and also you may get direct phone numbers or priority support options over shopping as a guest.
5. Never open parcel delivery emails that appear out of the blue especially if you have not ordered anything. Sometimes the scammer will rely on your curiosity to click on the link to see what you are supposed to have ordered.

By following at least some of these rules you should be able to pick out the real postal emails and messages from the scammers and have a safe and happier holiday delivery season. 

Have you ever recieved an invoice from someone you never heard of?

Were you so curious that you clicked on the link to the invoice to see what it was for?

• Don't click on any links in emails you are not sure about
• don't enter any information into form on links that you may have clicked on in an email if you do not trust the email
• Don't pay any money to anyone who contacts you by email and you are uncertain if you did business with the person or company
• If you are unsure of any part of an email you should go to the official website of the company to verify it is legitimate.

There are a number of fake emails hiiting our inboxes this week and luckily they are dissabled if you are using gmail. If you are not using Gmail it is important that you excercise extream caution when uyou get strange emails or invoices out of the blue.

This is how Gmail treats these dangerous emails:

The message "INV 266646220" from brian collyer (chiara@studioimpronta.it) contained a virus or a suspicious attachment. It was therefore not fetched from your account

Be Aware and not scammed.

A caller just reported on 3AW that he recieved an email that appears to come from Westpac Bank saying that his account will be locked unless he clicks on a link in the email to verify his account.

The important points to remember here are

• No banks send these sorts of emails to you
• no banks ask for your personal details in an email
• scammers and hackers hide viruses, malicious sofware and phishing links in these emails
• always check with your bank first when you get any suspicious emails
• never click on a link in an email that you are even slightly suspicious of.

Please share this with your friends and family and make sure you keep your security software up to date.

Join our community and be alerted to any scams and security issues for you and your family.

Join Frontier Internet Zone and experience safer Internet.

The odds are very high that you will get spam and scam emails in your inbox especially if you have had the same email address for a long period of time.

The scam emails can come in many different forms and some are annoying but others are very dangerous. It is getting harder to pick a real email from your postal delivery and a fake one with a virus attached to the file they want you to click on.

Thankfully, Gmail has a strong filter and it can move a lot of the spam emails to your spam folder so you don't even see them. Gmail will also remove harmful links from some emails or just refuse to download them to your inbox and send you a not instead. more dangerous emails are flagged with a big red warning banner highlighting the dangers of opening the email so you get plenty of warnings not to open the email.

Watch the video below and see Gmail in action and decide for yourself if you should use gmail for your main email service or even run you other emails through your gmail account.

Gmail can check up to 5 different email accounts so you can wash all your mail in gmail if you want.  

Click here to watch a short video showing how Gmail can protect you from dangerous emails.

If you need some help with gmail or you want to learn more about anything tech just contact me on the link below or join out FIZ community to get your own personal tech support, weekly updates and training about anything Internet or tech.

Need help? Ask a question here.

The Commonwealth Bank of Australia has experienced an outage affecting a number of its services and although the CBA is resolving the issues they are warning that this is a time to be alert for scams appearing to come from the bank.

If you are a CBA customer you may recieve emails from the bank alerting you of the outage and how it may impact you and this may cause you to be vulerable to scams featuring the bank.

If you get any communication said to be from the bank asking for personal details do not respond and do not give over any information unless you are certain it is from the bank. If you use the CBA app on your phone you will have more protection and can contact the bank from the app. Do not click on any links or call phone numbers sent in emails or SMS messages or social media posts.

Visit the CBA scam alerts page to see the latest scams.

 

If you use voice assistants to make calls and look up businesses you may be open to a new scam targeted at people who use voice assistants to find services and companies. 

When you say "hey Google, call Bobs Plumbing" you would expect to get Bob or his staff to answer the phone when you have called but you may get another business or a scammer who has pushed thier listing in front of Bob's. The best protection is to use voice to research the business you need to contact and look for their website to make sure they are real.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zakdoffman/2019/08/18/nasty-new-scam-alert-for-anyone-using-google-alexa-or-siri-to-make-calls/#2ef858c5e652

So what is the latest news?

What is important to you may be very different to what is important to me but some things are important to all of us even if we don't think it is and here is where you will find that news.

Every week I will post the important security alerts that are circulating online, on Facebook, other social media and in your email box so that you can be alert of these dangers and protect yourself and your friends.

Every Friday I will send an email to all Frontier Internet Zone members with detailed information to keep you educated and safe online. I will also share interesting stuff and answer your questions as you ask them so that you have the tools and confidence to surf the net and use technology without the worry and fear holding you back.

In Australia there are more than 14 million people online which is probably everyone over the age of 13.  In 2017 there were estimated to be around 16 million smartphone users so in theory that is 16 million people connected to the internet in some sort of way.

So imagine how many people are online in Australia now.

With so many people online and so much content available to be consumed we have a whole world of information and entertainment and opportunity at our disposal.

The next bulletin will be the first opportunity to share with you the Internet and Tech sfuff that matters to you.